


In Any Other World

by Storystuff



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic, Family Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship, The boys saying 'I love you' in their own way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 11:52:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13076304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storystuff/pseuds/Storystuff
Summary: In a more perfect world, Jackson Healy could have been anybody, done anything... but he's quite happy in this imperfect one, with his imperfect family





	In Any Other World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bimo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bimo/gifts).



> I hope this filled some of the prompt! I tried my best to have it fit, I think Healy is both a practical and a wistful kind of character, I think he knows he could do more, but I think the March family makes him happy enough that he doesn't care :) Have a very merry Christmas and that 2018 is wonderful! (and brings us even better things in the fandom! :D)

“Bye dad!” Healy saw Holland’s head whip into view from behind the open cupboard door.

He’d been searching in there for over half an hour for pasta which he had sworn, repeatedly, was in there. “I definitely have pasta,” Holland had repeated for the ninth time, just moments ago.

“March, it’s fine.”

“No, really, it was in here. We’re having pasta and I’m going to make it.”

“March, really, it’s not that important.”

“I’m sure it-”

“Bye dad!” Holly had intervened at the right moment, all things considered. If Healy had to listen to his partner say he was sure the missing pasta was in the cupboard one more time, he’d head out the door with Holly too.

“Wait, where are you going?” March asked. His face was crinkled with the mixed expression that Healy recognised as part confusion and part fuck-what-did-I-forget-this-time. True to form, March had, indeed, forgotten something.

Holly rolled her eyes, giving Healy a sidelong glance. Healy shrugged in response. As much as he was willing to mediate some of March’s more insane family drama, the day to day stuff still baffled him. How Holly was able to keep March in the kind of regard that she did stunned him and, yet, he supposed that the same was true of him. Not only could he somewhat see what Holly saw in her dad that was so amazing and, more suitably, improbable, but he couldn’t really believe that what she saw the same kind of thing in him too. Maybe it was naivety, as naïve as one could be around Holland March, but she believed the best of Healy. The best being better than anyone had thought of him in a long time.

“I’m going to the cinemas with Anna, remember?” Holly said slowly, looking at March with intent. March nodded just as slowly, flicking his eyes between Holly and Healy with a trapped expression, like he’d just put his foot on a land mine and didn’t want to move in case it went off.

“Anna… right. The one with the funny eye?” March said at last. Healy wanted to smack a palm to his forehead. Holly gave her dad a withering look.

“No, dad, the one with the dog? She lives next to that guy who’s always out mowing the lawn.”

“I thought that was Alice?”

Holly made a frustrated noise and rolled her eyes. Healy grinned at her from the dinner table, where he’d sat down about twenty minutes into March’s maddening pasta search. He’d seen those cupboards, there was no way there was pasta in any of them.

“Since Mr Healy has donated the appropriate amount of money to said cinema fund, I’ll be back around nine,” Holly said breezily, “I’ll see you!” She trotted from the door to Healy’s side, bending down to give him a light kiss on his cheek.

“Thanks for the money, Mr Healy!” she called back as she ran out the front door. March looked at Healy from behind the cupboard, then back to the door.

“Yeah, goodbye dad, too!” he called after her, the closed door yielding no response, “How come you’re the favourite?” Healy would have smirked at that, maybe said something along the lines of “kids, huh?” but he was frozen in his seat.

In another life, in any other world where Healy had made one less bad decision in life, Holly might have been his kid. Maybe she’d still have been a girl, or a boy like March always wanted, but she’d have really been his. She’d have been his, with his wife, and they’d have lived in a white picket house instead of March’s serial relationship with rented houses. In a more perfect world, Healy would have been a respectable man, with a family that could kiss him on the cheek without leaving him frozen to his seat because it had never crossed his mind that something so casually familial could happen to someone like him.

“I can’t find the fucking pasta,” March exploded from the kitchen and Healy snapped out of his daze. March was opening and closing cupboards at a frankly alarming rate.

“March, relax,” Healy said, clearing his throat around the lump that had formed against his will there, “I’ll make something.”

In the end, as usual, Healy made dinner. He rarely minded and since it seemed that Healy was at March’s place more often than his own now, it was only fair. Most nights Holly went out to a friend's house or an after-school club, and it meant that on those nights, it was just Healy, March, and whatever this thing was in the air between them. March was a friend, Healy’s partner, but there was more to it than that. March was also the comforting presence, the weird, zany constant that never ceased to be both surprising and warmly predictable. March was, sometimes, a very drunk kiss to Healy’s lips, or his neck, but so far, never further. March was…March. And Healy was happy with that.

In another world, where Healy was braver, or maybe a world where March’s wedding ring wasn’t still around his neck and Healy’s in a drawer somewhere, collecting dust, Healy would ask March what all this meant. Maybe in a more perfect world, Healy would have the courage to do more than just kiss March when his partner tugged at his shirt, sometimes drunk, sometimes only half so. In a perfect world, Healy would have an opportunity because March wouldn’t be drunk half the time and with Holly for the rest. But the world wasn’t perfect. The news told them that often enough, the porn and the drugs and the things they tried to hide Holly from so much of the time. The world was filled with the fucking Chets of society that The Nice Guys Detective Agency, for all their sins, were forced to sift through. But Healy was the happiest he'd been in years, years that included his wife, that included sobriety and respectable meals in restaurants and a steady job. The Marches were as close to perfectly imperfect as you could get, and they were perfect for Healy.

After dinner, Healy had cleared the plates, if only to avoid Holland breaking them in the sink. His partner was in a good mood tonight, the kind of mood that didn't come often but we're starting to get more frequent. Most nights March still drank too much, said too much or too little, felt too much guilt to operate past his unbelievable normal: Take care of Holly, make an ashtray out of the pool. Tonight there was a clarity in March's expression as he laid down on the couch, grunting his appreciation at the beat-up old cushions. Healy made a point not to listen to how stupidly sinful March sounded when he finally, _finally_ , relaxed.

"If you lay like that you'll put a crick in your neck," Healy warned from the sink. March grumbled something inaudible that Healy guessed started with "fuck".

"Alright, don't blame me when you get up," Healy said levelly. He noted as he lifted his hands from the soapy water and dried them off that his knuckles were unbruised for the first time in months. Some things, it seemed, were more perfect than others.

"S'not fair," came a mumble from the couch, "She's half my DNA. She's literally half me, so why are you the favourite?" Healy snorted at that, tucking the used dishrag over the tap.

"'Cos she's smart, that's why," he retorted. He made his way over to the couch, chuckling at the contorted position that March had wriggled himself into. His blonde hair was tufted up at all angles, making him look younger, like he'd put less miles on his face with alcohol and shaving cuts. March hummed a dismayed agreement, rolling his neck.

"My neck hurts already," he complained.

"Crappy couch," Healy said, "plus, you're old." March scoffed.

"If I'm old you're... really old," he finished lamely.

"Inspired," Healy deadpanned, "Move up some." He made a scooting signal with his hand and moved to sit down where March's neck was cricking itself a new pain but, child that he was, March only lifted his head marginally. Sighing, Healy slotted his thighs under March's head, propping him into a position that he hoped would mean less neck pain for March later and less of a pain in the neck for Healy to listen to him complain about. March made a satisfied noise, curling like a dog by a fireside. Healy would have flicked on the tv then, in a perfect world, where this was just another domestic night with a perfectly normal woman rather than a perfectly abnormal man. The remote was too far, on the other side of the coffee table, and moving March was more of a headache than it was worth.

In a perfect world, there might have been something good on the tv but, as it stood, Healy was sure he wasn't missing anything. He felt the weight on his legs shift a little and he looked down to see March staring at him. It was a rare look, something so sincere that Healy couldn't even mock him for it. It was a lucid, calculating stare that made him wonder just how much of what went on in March's head, all the smarts it took to become a cop, to be a detective, to bring up a great kid like Holly, ever really showed on the surface.

"What?" Healy asked.

"Nothing," March said quickly. Too quickly. Healy raised an eyebrow and March actually blushed. Healy pushed down the weird flutter that his stomach made, consoling himself with some lie about a bad dinner.

"Holly likes you," March said simply, "You're definitely the favourite." Healy felt that familiar lump in his throat. He nodded.

"I hope so, I gave her everything in my wallet today to buy overpriced cinema snacks." March actually giggled at that. It was a ridiculous sound that he usually only made when he was drunk, but Healy didn't want to linger on that thought too much.

"I like you too," Holland said. And there it was. Simple, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, as if they both already knew it and it was no big deal, like it wasn't wrong and it wasn't totally impossible. It wasn't. In a perfect world, maybe, it might have been harder, might have never happened. But not in their world, as crazy and terrible and fantastic as it was. It was just Holland and Healy and the daughter they both loved; it made sense.

Healy wanted to reply but the way Holland looked at him with a sleepy, comfortable smile made him think that Holland knew an awful lot more than he ever let on. Nodding as if he'd settled something decisive, Holland rolled over, snuggling his cheek into Healy's thigh. Healy glared, momentarily hating March's brain, then softened. He passed a fond hand through Holland’s unruly hair.

In a more perfect world, Healy would never have met, much less loved, a man like Holland March. And yet, here he was. Out of everything and anything, out the mights and the might-nots, all the twists and turns in his life had lead Healy here. To the drunken, clumsy, ridiculous goofball on his lap, that meant the world to him, and the daughter he didn’t believe, in all those possible universes, he could ever have had.

As far as things went in this crazy, messed-up town, it wasn’t a bad life.


End file.
